From TES issue 61 (January 2010)

Series 7. Level 2.
THE RIFT OF ANGAR
This great rift valley - situated between the towering peaks of a green mountain range - was the entrance to level two in series 7. Unlike much of the Dungeon in this series, the environs of the Rift of Angar were created using fairly primitive Virtual Reality techniques, one of the first signs that the programme was moving away from using digitised photographs of real locations and back towards creating the Dungeon rooms on computers from scratch. This technique was continued in this series with the introduction of Goth in level three, before the entire Dungeon became computer-generated in series 8.

As Smirkenorff was the only means of travel to the second level in series 7, the Rift of Angar was the first CG location to feature in a flight sequence. The first time the Rift is seen, Treguard describes it as ”a very dangerous place” and it seems to be implied that dungeoneer Simon has made a grave mistake when he asks Smirkenorff to land in the valley, but in all subsequent quests Treguard and Majida readily describe the Rift of Angar as the one and only entrance to level two, and Smirkenorff always lands there as a matter of course.

The first challenge in level two was always to enter a doorway in the mountains after Smirkenorff had landed in the valley, a task that was sometimes made harder than it might have been by the presence of trolls – which had apparently overrun the area – or (in the case of Nicola’s quest) by Hordriss and Grimaldine throwing fireballs at each other across the path. On several other occasions, the Rift played host to a spyglass, and once (during Naila’s quest) it even served as the clue room for level two.

I don’t really have any strong feelings about the Rift of Angar. I suppose it served as quite an atmospheric opening to the second level, and it was certainly a precursor to the whole style of series 8… and that’s all there is to say about it, really!

Difficulty: 7 Plenty of hazards to dodge…
Killer Instinct: 1 Unlikely that anyone would have died, though!
Gore Factor: 6 It looked like there might be some nice quicksand…
Fairness: 8 Things should always start to hot up in level two!

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